Watch the first trailer for Furious 7

RIP Paul Walker, long live Fast & Furious.

At long last, here's your first look at Furious 7, the late Paul Walker's final acting role and the newest installment of the Fast & Furious franchise, which shows no signs of stopping. Without further ado, the long-awaited trailer:

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Haters gonna hate, but the Fast & Furious saga has lasted 13 years (!) because it has mastered the formula. The cars are cool, the stunts thrilling, the action relentless, the stories are fun, and the cast of characters is a rogue's gallery we've gotten to know and love. I've said this before, but the FF franchise has an all-important ingredient that cannot be overrated: charm.

If you think success is as easy as assembling a bunch of cool cars, going fast, and blowing stuff up, you're wrong. See Need For Speed, which despite amazing stuntwork and a great lead actor in Aaron Paul, is a terrible movie crippled by a trainwreck of a screenplay and characters that are impossible to care about. NFS tried to ape the FF recipe and it failed spectacularly.

James Wan (Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring) takes the Furious 7 directorial reins from Justin Lin, who stepped in at Tokyo Drift and ran the show through Fast & Furious 6, creating a cohesive movie universe, a la Marvel, in the process. Furious 7 opens nationwide in April. I'll see ya at the concession stand.

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